Instrument Development and Psychometric of Measurement of patients’ attitude toward pharmacists’ professional characteristics and commitments

Abstract

Introduction: Pharmacists, As a group that is easily accessible to the public, establish the most communication with the community. The shift from a drug-centered to a patient-centered approach has increased these interactions and introduced various ethical and professional dilemmas.Objective: To develop and Psychometric the instrument of measurement of patients’ attitude toward pharmacists’ professional characteristics and commitments.Methodology: The foundational ethical framework of Iran's pharmaceutical system, along with the professional commitment charter and six individual traits indicative of professional conduct as defined by the American Board of Internal Medicine, served as the basis for crafting the questions for the assessment tool. An item pool was generated from the examples of each commitment and trait, focusing on attributes such as "simplicity," "brevity," and "clarity." After the questions were formulated, a new closed-format instrument was constructed, and its face validity, content validity, and construct validity were evaluated in line with recognized standards for instrument creation.Results: The initial item pool was constructed utilizing ethical codes and collaborative discussions. The face validity of the questionnaire was examined through interviews with 14 members of the general public. Content validity was assessed and validated by 22 specialists, employing the CVR, CVI, and S-CVI metrics. The preliminary analysis revealed a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.919. The intracluster correlation coefficient for the instrument was calculated at 0.860. A total of 41 items advanced to the exploratory factor analysis phase. The KMO statistic was recorded at 0.978, and the Bartlett's test indicated significance. Factor extraction was performed using the maximum likelihood approach, leading to the identification of five factors. Conclusion: The instrument of measurment of patients' attitudes towards the characteristics and professional commitments of pharmacists has been developed with established validity and reliability, with 36 items categorized into five final factors.